Addressing the Engineer in the Science Standards: Critique and Occupation of the E in STEM

• In Event: Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Occupation and Empowerment: Lessons From Difference and Conflict

Abstract

Using a critical frame and discourse analysis, this paper contends that Next Generation Science Standards fall short of the standards needed in public education. First, NGSS impose a top-down technicist notion of science education without links to empirical studies about learning, teaching, and schooling that should guide reform. Second, NGSS place science ahead of engineering and mischaracterize engineering. Third, this science ideology casts the messy work of “design” out of science, and leaves science and engineering-science (especially socially situated) uses to someone else. Fourth, this science ideology overlooks its own gender, race/ethnicity, and class affiliations, undercutting equity. We propose an alternative, standards patterned after democratizing social movements focused on decentering the political, epistemic, and mainstream power ideologies smuggled into NGSS.

Authors

• Matthew Weinstein, University of Washington - Tacoma

• Karen L. Tonso, Wayne State University